


Toy Story

by monicawoe



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Humor, Mind Control, Other, Protective Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Puppets, Stuffed Toys, Theft, canon compliant eating of heads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27061225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe
Summary: Venom and Eddie are out patrolling when they see Dan behaving strangely. They follow him back to a house where people are being held captive: their bodies used against their will while their minds are being stored in dolls.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 16
Kudos: 98
Collections: Spook Me Ficathon, Venom





	Toy Story

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta luckyraeve!
> 
> Written for the spook me ficathon 2020, inspired by these two prompt images: 
> 
> https://images12.fotki.com/v1667/photos/6/3814576/16181654/rencavoodoocrowd_jpg1429912093-vi.jpg
> 
> https://images14.fotki.com/v390/photos/6/3814576/16181654/evilcreepyscaryspookyhalloween-vi.jpg

The night air was cold, and it smelled like Fall. Eddie loved an innumerable amount of things about being joined with Venom, but the bigger, more obvious ones—being strong enough to protect the innocent and nigh invulnerable—tended to outweigh the smaller things like the amplified senses, the way that he felt temperature changes more acutely but wasn’t affected by them. With the exception of direct contact with fire, obviously. 

Being able to smell the subtle changes in the city air was one of the smaller things. Eddie had lived in San Francisco for years now and knew how the seasons typically played out, but thanks to Venom he could take in the subtleties piece by piece—the trees and flowers, the distinct scents of cold and warm air hitting the ocean and the shift in smells when people started cooking warmer meals at dinner time. Crab and bay shrimp and bread baking, even the overpowering stink of pumpkin spice lattes seemed pleasant. But then, everything did lately. They were happy together. They had a purpose. 

**_Hungry._ **

_Yeah me too,_ Eddie replied. They hadn’t had anything since second lunch which was hours ago at this point. _Let’s go home._

Leaping across rooftops they made their way quickly through the city until they got back to their neighborhood. Out of habit, they curved around to pass by Anne and Dan’s apartment building. They were probably fine, they always were, but Eddie never felt like a patrol was complete until they’d checked in on them.

Except the lights in their windows were off. _That’s odd._

**_Maybe they are out._ **

_Yeah, probably. Seeing a movie or something._

Eddie sighed, and Venom squeezed a little tighter around his heart, offering comfort. His feelings about Anne and Dan were always a little sorrowful. He cared for both of them, and was happy they’d found each other, but part of him still missed Anne, and all of him still hated himself for what he’d done to her. Eddie pushed those thoughts away, focusing again on Venom and what he was now, on what _they_ were. 

**“Maybe not,”** Venom said, pointing down at the alley beneath them. Dan was there, doing...something.

"Dan!" Eddie called out, his head emerging briefly so he could use his own voice, "Hi, Dan!"

But Dan didn't react. Either he hadn't heard Eddie, or he was too busy doing whatever it was he was doing. Eddie cocked his head, and Venom slipped back over him so they could get a better look on multiple spectrums. Dan was kicking something, no— _someone,_ an older woman who'd collapsed in the alley against the wall, unconscious. That wasn't very Dan-like at all.

Venom jumped down into the alley, landing silently. Dan wouldn't hurt somebody innocent, so either the old lady was anything but or Dan wasn't himself. They approached slowly, and watched, increasingly confused as Dan stopped kicking and crouched down, grabbed the old woman's purse and yanked the pearls from her neck.

**“Dan?”** Venom asked again carefully.

Dan stood and turned, movements oddly smooth like his left heel was rooted in place and the rest of him just pivoted around, turning his whole body until it was facing the intersection ahead. He walked away, clutching the purse and pearls, eyes unfocused and never once noticed Venom.

_Something's wrong._

**_Gee, you think?_ **

_Let's follow him._

They climbed back up the building, so they could follow Dan more discreetly from overhead and leapt across the streets from building to building, keeping watch on where he was headed.

_Wait. What about Anne?_

**_We cannot follow him and search for her at the same time. What should we do?_ **

As they watched, Dan made another of those odd, robotic turns, facing an ornate Victorian-style house on Buchanan Street. He walked up the steps and the door opened at his approach. 

_Anne!_ Eddie pointed towards the other end of the block. Anne walked with the same automaton-style movements, holding a briefcase that Eddie was positive wasn't hers. _What the Hell is going on?_

**_Let's find out._ **

_How are we supposed to get in there?_

**_Like this._** Venom jumped back down to the sidewalk, retracted, and re-solidified in Eddie's hand as a black, shining briefcase.

_Should work._

Eddie followed Anne, at a good distance, up the stairs, through the door into the old eerie house, down a creaky hallway trying to make his walk just as oddly nondescript as hers. The hall led to a set of stairs heading down to an unusually large basement—easily three times the size of the property from the look of it. Eddie nearly forgot to keep walking for a moment, but snapped out of it long enough to stay in step with Anne.

The basement was divided into three sections: to Eddie's left another room with a closed red door, to his right on the periphery of what he could see without turning his head was what looked like a barnyard pen, and straight ahead, lining the back wall was a long table, the kind you'd see at outdoor picnics or in school auditoriums for bake sales. Everyone ahead of them in line, including Dan and Anne and dozens of strangers made their way to the table, dropped whatever it was they were carrying: purses, briefcases, a sack of what Eddie supposed were jewels. These people were all being mind controlled to commit robberies.

_Somebody’s controlling these people. They’ve got to be here somewhere._

**_Astute as always. They’re behind the closed door._ **

_How do you know?_

**_We can smell them._ **

Eddie realized that’s what they’d been smelling and filed it away under the long list of things he knew how to recognize by scent now. Still mimicking the others ahead of him in line, Eddie copied Anne’s movements, setting his briefcase-shaped-Venom down right next to hers. Venom quickly reformed, slipping back inside Eddie from one moment to the next. They spun on their heel, following Anne towards the right part of the room, headed straight for the pen, which Eddie now saw, held people. All the people that had been out fetching stuff for their mysterious mind-controlling fiend. 

The mind-control victims stood in the pen just as unnaturally rigid as they’d walked — in perfectly even rows and columns, staring forwards with totally blank faces, like uncomfortably lifelike mannequins. Eddie repressed a shudder as he headed for the gate. Something prickled at his skin like a warning, a faint static sensation and then pain wracked his body and Venom screamed inside of him as they were torn from each other.

*

Eddie’s consciousness stuttered for a few agonizing seconds and when he could think and see again he was alone and flat on the floor. He pushed himself to standing, head still fuzzy and even more confused. Even standing he was...short. Really, really short. He wasn’t in the pen anymore, he was in the room with the red door. And even standing, he barely came up to—no not barely—nowhere close to the door’s handle. He looked down at himself in dawning horror as he realized his body wasn’t his body at all. He was in some kind of puppet: made of a thick hemp fabric and stitched together with pieces of mismatched yarn and thread. “What the hell?” he muttered with a high-pitched squeaking voice. “Venom?” he called, more panicked, sensing the emptiness in his head, amidst the new and strange sensation of stuffing where his brain should be. “Venom!”

“Eddie? Is that you?” A voice asked from behind him. Quiet, gentle and familiar. 

“Anne?” Eddie whipped around and saw another doll walking towards him, this one with yellow yarn hair and button eyes. He ran, or hobbled, as quickly as his stubby cloth legs could carry him over to her and hugged her, or tried to. His arms landed somewhere near her head, and the little sewn mouth of hers turned a tiny bit at the corners. “What the hell is this?” He looked around the rest of the room, pushing down the thought of how he could see through two buttons or talk through a mouth made of cross stitch thread, and saw to his horror dozens of other dolls, all of them moving. Another, with dark brown yarn hair was headed towards them. Eddie blinked, or tried to. “Dan?”

“Yeah,” Dan shrugged his arms. “It’s me.”

“Where’s Venom?” Anne asked, “Were you—“

“Yeah, whatever knocked me out of my body separated us. I don’t know if they’re still in my body, or—” Eddie cut himself off, trying to quell his building panic. Venom was okay. They had to be. “Any idea what we’re dealing with?”

Anne nodded. “Magic. We think. I mean there’s no other explanation.”

“Everything we’ve seen since we’ve gotten here is impossible. Honestly, I would’ve been completely fine with you as the weirdest thing in my life,” Dan said. “But this takes the cake.”

“There’s a woman,” Anne said. “And from what we’ve seen, she controls our bodies with an amulet.” 

“And uses them to steal from people,” Eddie finished. 

“She keeps our minds, or—souls, I guess, in here,” Dan said, gesturing at his puppet-body. “In these. But what we can’t figure out is why.” 

“Not sure I care why,” Eddie said, “I just want to figure out how to undo it, and get us all back into our bodies.”

“Right, but how?” Anne said. “Believe me, we’ve tried, but there’s only so much we can do like this.” She threw her stubby arms into the air in frustration.

“Well now we’ve got Venom,” Eddie said, trying for a comforting smile. “And I know they’ll think of something.”

*

**_Eddie!_ **

Venom felt the horrid pull separating the two of them and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. The force was unexpected and strong, a sub-cellular modulation that cut off their bond so instantly Venom’s consciousness shorted out for a full second before they came back to themselves, melted on the floor in an undignified puddle. **_Eddie’s gone._**

They pulled themselves together quickly and flowed towards the table, reforming into a sack to blend in with the other containers on the table. They didn’t have the mental wherewithal to form a briefcase, but a sack was easy enough.

From their vantage point they could survey the whole room up to and including the distressing sight of Eddie’s empty body standing in the pen along with other humans. Eddie wasn’t home, that much was clear—not just from the blank look in his body’s eyes, but the mental link they shared made his brain patterns easy for Venom to recognize and Eddie’s body had none. It was alive, but only physically. Eddie’s consciousness was somewhere else. That somewhere else, Venom quickly deduced, was the room with the red door. There were multiple brain patterns inside, squished and deformed in the strangest way but definitely human, and amongst them, shining like a beacon, was Eddie’s.

**_I’m coming_** , Venom thought, but just as they started to reach out a tendril, a woman came down the staircase. 

She walked towards the table, and picked through the loot her human puppets had stolen for her. One after the other she dumped the contents onto the table, pausing after emptying a wallet that held a whopping three dollars. “Pathetic,” she muttered. “Nobody even carries cash anymore these days.” 

When her head was turned, Venom thinned themselves out and slid under an already opened briefcase. She’d notice, maybe, but they weren’t about to risk being grabbed by her until they knew what exactly they were dealing with. 

Angling for a better look, they extruded a tendril down to the floor and up behind her back, over her shoulder to get a better look at the ornate necklace she was wearing. They’d assumed it was just something she’d pilfered, but it was giving off the oddest multi-tonal hum, far out of the range of human hearing. They’d heard it somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place it. The frequency was echoed somewhere else in the room, and they surreptitiously followed the hum, oozing down to the floor and stretching out long and thin, one end reaching towards the pen, the other towards the red door. 

**_Aha. You stole that too,_** Venom thought, satisfied that they at least had an idea of what they were dealing with now. It was either a molecular re-arranger or a neural transference device, both of which were outlawed devices in most inhabited worlds they’d devoured. _Visited_.

They heard voices: small squeaky ones, and after reaching for the red door tentatively to check if there was another barrier (there wasn’t), they poured themselves up and through the keyhole. The brain patterns were all behind the door, but beyond that Venom had no idea what to expect. Their multi-spectrum senses couldn’t pick up any other tell-tale human life signs, no heat signatures, no pulsing hearts. But nevertheless, Eddie’s mind pulled them closer and closer and they hurried through the keyhole eagerly.

**“Eddie?”** Venom asked as they reformed inside the room, staring in abject confusion at a room full of toys. Dolls of varying sizes, several of them looking right at him. 

“Venom!” shouted one of the dolls, shambling forwards with outstretched stumpy arms and a smile that was all Eddie’s despite being made of black thread. “I knew you were okay.”

**“Of course _I’m_ okay,”** Venom said, sliding in the rest of the way through the keyhole. “ **But you, on the other hand, are a puppet. In more ways than one."** Sidling closer to Eddie, they probed him gently, testing. It was Eddie inside the cloth, that much they were sure of, close enough now that they could share each others thoughts again, but their physical connection needed biological components. **"We cannot join with you like this, and that means _we_ are not okay.”**

"But we will be, right? You have a plan?" Eddie asked hopefully.

**"Just because I'm six thousand years older than you, you assume I know what to do?"**

"Well...yeah."

**"Fair point. Well, I don't. However I do know how your captor is doing this."**

How?" Anne asked, moving closer to Venom.

"It's magic, right? It's gotta be," Eddie muttered.

Venom shook their head, extending a small tendril to pat Eddie on the cheek. He was adorable, but also occasionally painfully dumb. **"There's no such thing."**

"No such thing?" Eddie scoffed and then pointed his stubby arms towards himself, or tried to, but managed only to flail them around. "I'm a puppet!"

Dan came up next to Eddie, nodding. "Gotta agree with Eddie here. If you're saying there's a scientific explanation for this, I'd love to hear it."

**"Your captor has a necklace with an amulet,** **and that amulet is the scientific explanation**."

“A necklace that can turn us into dolls. How is that not magic?” Anne asked.

“Magic or not, we need to get the necklace,” Eddie said, nodding in understanding. 

**"It's a neural transference device,"** Venom said, **"and if we can just—"**

The door slammed open and a woman stepped in: their captor, who, with a frenzied look in her eyes, surveyed the room, scanning every inch. 

Venom slithered instantly out of sight to the back corner of the room, and hid temporarily behind the two dozen other frightened dolls. There had to be something in this room they could use to defeat their captor.

“I know you're in here. I saw you," the woman said, pulling the door shut behind her. "Some kind of gross, black, slimy eel-thing." She grabbed at her necklace. "Can't get a hold on you yet, but I will."

**_Gross?_** Venom bristled.

_You’re beautiful, darling._

"What are you talking about?" Anne said, putting her handless arm stumps against her hips. "There's no eel here. Just us." 

Anne was distracting her, Venom thought, smiling to themselves as they saw something suitable sitting on the top shelf of the room. Quickly, while the woman was distracted, they flung out a tentacle and pulled themselves up.

Their captor glared down at the Anne puppet with contempt. "Philippa Masters is many things, but crazy isn’t one of them.”

“I don’t know,” puppet Anne countered, “talking to yourself—especially in third person—is usually a pretty sure fire sign you’re crazy.”

**_What’s wrong with talking to yourselves?_** Venom wondered.

_Not us,_ Eddie answered silently. _We’re actually talking to ourselves._

**_Of course we are,_** Venom thought back still confused, but then let it drop. They’d reached their goal. **_Get ready, Eddie._**

_For what?_

With a grin, Venom shot forwards, fusing with the giant, pink, plush bunny sitting on the top shelf. It was odd, fusing with something inanimate, but they’d done it before in emergencies, and this certainly qualified. 

“What in the name of all that’s good and holy—“ Philippa stammered as Venom threw open their fanged plush mouth and hissed, letting their teeth pierce through the bunny’s polyester. It only took a matter of seconds for them to finish melding, the soft fake fur tickling as they subsumed it.

**“We are neither good, nor holy,”** Venom said. **“But we are very angry about what you’ve done to Eddie, our friends and these other innocents.”** And with that pronouncement, they hopped down from the shelf, bunny kicked Phillipa in the chest, sending her stumbling back against the wall, and then chomped her head clean off.

“Oh my God, oh my _God_ what’s happening?” screamed one of the puppets, running in circles, setting off a miniature stampede of panicked dolls. Anne and Dan tried to calm them, but failed, nearly getting trampled as the puppets all ran for the door, away from Venom, who was only somewhat blood spattered, all things considered.

**“Calm down!”** Venom snapped, irritated. Humans were always so sensitive. 

But the puppets did not, in fact, calm down. They only panicked more, some of them now on their knees crying, another saying, _“Don’t eat me don’t eat me, please don’t eat me,”_ over and over. 

“Nobody’s getting eaten!” Eddie said, “Well, nobody else, anyway. We’re gonna save you.”

“How?” A particularly blubbery puppet asked, sniffling. And for a fraction of a second, Venom wondered how a puppet could sound so snotty, when it had no respiratory organs to speak of. 

“Uh.” Eddie turned to Venom hopefully. “Want to share the plan?”

**“We will return you to your bodies, with this!** ” Venom announced, yanking the amulet off of Philippa’s neck. It wasn’t immediately obvious where the controls were, but surely it couldn’t be that hard to figure out. Venom brought it closer to their eyes, searching for a switch or toggle.

“With a necklace?” The blubbery puppet piped up. “With a damn necklace?”

“It’s a—neural transmogrifier uh...thing,” Eddie explained. 

**_“This has no controls, no toggle,”_** Venom said, quietly, but loud enough for Eddie, Anne and Dan to hear. **_“I don’t know how to reverse it.”_**

“Great, well can we improvise something?” Dan asked, “We’re about thirty seconds away from another toy riot.”

“Wait, it—” Eddie put his puppet hand on Venom’s fuzzy pink arm. “The forcefield around the pen. It’s connected to this somehow, right?”

Venom stared at Eddie. **“Yes. Colliding with the forcefield activated it, and that means—”** Venom grinned wide and gave Eddie's head an affectionate stroke with the tip of their tongue. Eddie could be very smart sometimes. **“The forcefield _is_ the toggle.”**

Eddie smiled, and raised his arms as high as he could, “Okay, listen up everybody! We’ve got to go to the pen—”

“We’re locked in here!” Someone called out.

Venom thrust a tendril towards the door, reached through to the lock and opened it. Immediately the puppets started running again, shoving their way forwards.

**“One at a time!”** Venom shouted. **“Otherwise there could be...mixups.”**

“Single file, people!” Anne called out, blocking the exit as best as she could, with Dan and Eddie’s help. 

Venom hopped over them, watching closely as the first puppet went through the forcefield. To their great relief, the forcefield rippled and popped, the puppet went limp and a man with glasses and a rumpled suit jerked awake in the pen and let out a “Oh thank goodness,” then shoved his way unceremoniously past the others and went back out. It was a mono-directional energy field toggle luckily. Going back out wouldn’t reverse the effects.

The next puppet went in and came out a woman in a hot pink dress with matching boots and lipstick. And one by one they all got back into their bodies, Anne and Dan too, until only Eddie was left in puppet form. 

“We go in together, right?” Eddie asked.

**“If you prefer. My consciousness and matter are one and the same. I can’t be separated like you.”**

But Eddie, ever himself, even in puppet form, cocked his head, and gave Venom a look, until they had no choice but to scoop him up and hop through the barrier together. The moment Eddie’s puppet went limp in Venom’s plush paws they left the bunny and flowed back into Eddie’s body, so they could experience the reunion together. 

It felt wonderful, Venom sliding into place as Eddie’s mind did: to Eddie it felt like the most comfortable pair of jeans, like being able to breathe again after being underwater, like a warm bath and everything else pleasant his brain could conjure up. And to Venom, well to Venom, it felt like home in a way nobody else ever had.

The house had emptied except for Anne and Dan, who were standing by the table of stolen things. “We should call the police,” Dan mused. 

“And tell them what?” Anne asked. “That we both mugged people and stole their things but we’re better now and want to give them back?”

Dan hung his head. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

“Anonymous tip?” Eddie said. “Or maybe—Venom, how would you feel about playing Robin Hood?” Eddie asked.

**“Who?”** Venom stuck their head out of Eddie’s shoulder.

“Or Santa Claus.”

**“I thought he comes in December.”**

“Both of those are not—” Anne shook her head, “You’re giving people back their _own_ things.”

“Okay fine,” Eddie laughed. “What do you say instead of fighting crime tonight, we undo some that already happened?”

**“Fine,** ” Venom said, “ **But first, dinner.”**

“You just ate a whole head.”

**“That is _all_ we had to eat. An appetizer at best. Hardly sufficient!”**

“We can’t just leave all this here,” Eddie said. “It won’t take us that long.”

Venom’s frown grew deeper. “ **If we return all these first I will be _very_ hungry afterwards.”**

“So then after we return everything, we’ll get lo mein and fried rice.”

**“And?”**

“And Hawaiian pizza.”

**_“And?”_ **

Eddie sighed. “ _And_ two pints of Chunky Monkey ice cream.”

**“Deal.”**

“Gross,” Anne said.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Dan said, eyes wide.

Eddie grinned and Venom felt appeased. Dinner could wait a while longer. Especially if doing this made Eddie happy. **“Go home,”** they said to Anne and Dan. “ **We’ve got it from here.”**

“Yeah, “ Eddie said, tilting his head towards Venom until they obliged, and enveloped him fully. “We do.”


End file.
